Against All Odds

President Bush is apparently plotting a nuclear strike on Iran, the Italian elections are on a knife edge and bird flu finally reaches Britain. But what is the British press worried about? The fact that Wayne Rooney allegedly owes a bookie friend of Michael Owen £700,000 and that tjis might affect their striking partnership for England at the World Cup finals! Jesus Christ! Is this what we've finally come to? A popular press so obsessed with celebrity and money it is blinded to everything else? Perhaps the press is just reflecting the British public - so absorbed in the domestic trivia that the world could end and we'd only notice when nobody else turned up for the World Cup, (in which case the tabloids would celebrate England's victory by default as we all slowly died of radiation sickness).

But getting back to Rooney and his debts (everyone else is, so why fight it?),I like the implication in much of the reporting that the Manchester United teen wonder is somehow facing financial ruin, having his house repossessed, etc., if he doesn't pay up. Entertaining though such a scenario might be to tabloid editors and their readers, it ignores the fact that gambling debts cannot be enforced through law in the UK. So instead, young Wayne is facing a visit from 'the boys', who will threaten to introduce him to 'Bessie the Baseball Bat', or some such other macho bullshit. Maybe the crocked Michael Owen can hobble round on his bookie mate's behalf swinging a piece of two by four? Or perhaps it could be a job for Owen's former Newcastle boss, Graham Souness? Let's face it, he's not doing anything else, he probably needs the money and he likes to think he's well hard. And he's Scottish and as anyone versed in tabloid stereotypes know, the Scots are always violent thugs.

What fascinates me most about the reporting of this Rooney business is the class element inherent in it all. Implicit in much of the reporting is the idea that basically, he's working class and therefore too stupid to know how to manage his own finances responsibly. If only he'd been a nice middle class boy, I'm sure he'd have invested it all in a Halifax savers account! I can guarantee that if it was some flash city broker, or some member of the aristocracy who had lost £700,00 at the roulette or bridge table, the press, if at all interested, would be sympathising with them for having had a 'spot of bad luck'. But of course, Rooney is working class, and was betting on sports (how vulgar 'betting' is - 'gambling' on the other hand, is the sport of Kings); he therefore must be stupid.

I really am growing tired of this patronising attitude toward the working classes currently being displayed on the part of the media, reinforcing crude stereotypes - feckless, drunk, stupid, irresponsible - and, by implication, asserting the smug superiority of the middle class. Wayne Rooney, in particular, is always portrayed as some kind of brainless neanderthal incapable of making any kind of sensible decision away from the football field. David Beckham has suffered similar treatment. Now, I don't hold a brief for either Rooney or Beckham, but the fact is that neither strike me as being especially bad, or stupid people. I can't help but feel that much of the disapproval heaped upon them has something to do with the fact that they're working class boys who have had the good sense to capitalise on their skills and make some money from them. Of course, in modern Britain, where money is King again, it just isn't seemly for the 'wrong types' to get their hands on it, now is it?